- Smart bed owners were hit by this week’s big AWS outage
- Owners of the Eight Sleep Pod reported overheating and being stuck upright
- Eight Sleep tells customers it’s “outage-proofing your Pod experience”
This week’s huge AWS outage had a number of bizarre knock-on effects, but the most unexpected might be the one that hit owners of some smart beds.
As many unfortunate owners of the Eight Sleep Pod reported, the Amazon Web Services issues – which hit over 1,000 businesses – left their smart beds overheating and even stuck in an upright position.
One owner (below) said it “would be great if my bed wasn’t stuck in an inclined position due to an AWS outage”. Meanwhile, another viral post from early adopter Alex Browne (as reported by Dexerto) said that a “backend outage means I’m sleeping in a sauna”.
The root of the problem was that the company’s ‘Pod’, which you can buy as a mattress or a full bed with a base, is internet-connected so it can track your biometric data and control the mattress’s temperature. Sadly, many owners discovered that this functionality is very much double-edged during a big internet outage.
Fortunately, Eight Sleep responded quickly to ensure that its smart bed customers didn’t have their sleep disrupted for too long.
The company’s CEO, Matteo Franceschetti, said on X that changes have been made to avoid outages causing these disruptions, promising owners that the company is “currently outage-proofing your Pod experience”.
The dark side of the smart home
We’ve previously enjoyed Eight Sleep products like its Pod 3 Cover, which our review called “a great sleep aid with some brilliant smart functionality for heating and cooling”.
But while there are some benefits to your bed having sleep tracking and heating powers, this AWS outage showed that this smart home connectivity doesn’t come without its downsides.
Let’s be honest, for those of us with non-smart beds, hearing that an internet outage has left someone’s bed stuck in an upright position is pretty hilarious. With the AWS outage proving stressful for many, a little frisson of schadenfreude does provide some welcome light relief.
The good news is that Eight Sleep is now fixing its smart mattresses and beds to make them outage-proof in the future – and right now, it seems the AWS nightmare is over for most of us, too.
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mark.wilson@futurenet.com (Mark Wilson)
